Hello everyone!
Today's cake is a delicious vanilla and hazelnut cake. It's very sweet, but in a soft way, and its buttercream its made with pure hazelnut paste.
You can find the pure hazelnut paste in specialized shops, along with countless other flavours. So if you want to do this buttercream in any other flavour, you can do it!
This is a swiss meringue buttercream, which I love because of its smoothness and the fact that it doesn't need 400g of confectioners sugar to be made. This buttercream, but with milk chocolate, is the same that I used in the Chocolate and Vanilla layer cake.
Basic
Vanilla Cake
Ingredients
(yields
a 20cm diameter cake)
Directions
Pre-heat
the oven at 180ºC (356ºF). Grease the
cake pan with butter.
Whisk
the butter and sugar up until getting a smooth batter. Add the eggs,
one by one, beating well after each addition.
In
a separate bowl, mix flour and baking powder and add it to the
previous mix, beating until well incoporated.
Hazelnut
Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Ingredients
(to
decorate a 20cm diameter cake)
Directions
Mix
the egg whites with the sugar in a double boiler. Heat the mixture
while stirring until the sugar has completely melted and it's
opaque. To chech if the sugar has melted, rub some mixture between
your fingers; if you do not feel any sugar in it, take the pot away
from the heat.
Whisk
the mixture up at high speed until it's completely cold.
Add
the butter, cubed. Add only two or three cubes at a time, whipping
up at every addition. Repeat until you have used all the butter.
Whip until the buttercream looks smooth and light.
Add
the hazelnut paste until fully incorporated.
Attention:
if the meringue was not completely cold after whipping it up, the
butter will melt when you add it and the buttercream will be too
liquid. If this happens, put the bowl in the fridge for half an hour
until you have reached the desired consistency and whisk it up
again.
This
buttercream can be stored in the fridge for a week and in the
freezer for six-eight weeks. To thaw it, put it on the fridge
overnight. In both cases, whip it for 5 minutes before using it.
You
may buy bottled egg whites in order to avoid having to throw away
the yolks. In that case, these are the conversion in grams:
10
egg whites = 300gr
5
egg whites = 150gr
3
egg whites = 90gr
To make the cake:
- Divide the cake horizontally in three or two layers. Put a bit of buttercream between each layer.
- Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of buttercream, to catch the crumbs, and put the cake in the fridge for half an hour.
- Put a thicker layer of buttercream on the cake, covering all the sides, and smooth it with a spatula.
- Decorate the rest as you wish, with a pastry bag.
Anna
